Why This Matters Beyond One Match
The damage here is not to Pakistan’s U-19 team. They will play again. Players will age out. Tournaments will rotate.
The damage is to discourse.
When journalists with reach imply intent without evidence, timelines follow. When timelines follow, players and staff absorb abuse. And when abuse becomes normalised, cricket quietly loses its claim to being a civilised sport.
This episode should have been a conversation about youth cricket philosophy.
Instead, it became an exercise in how quickly fact yields to performance outrage.
That should worry everyone who claims to love the game.
